Facing yet another monster

Ever so often my mind goes to some pretty dark places, even though I normally have a reasonably positive outlook. During the average day I have to focus on work, chores, and other necessary things. But there are times when I let my mind wander. Sometimes I am in anticipation of things looked forwards to, like coaster trips. However, other mental journeys take me into shadowy realms where I end up closely scrutinizing morbid thoughts. In looking towards my upcoming vacation, I can’t help but think about the bridge I will soon be visiting. And such thoughts also lead me to look forwards to walking the Chesapeake Bay Bridge again this fall. I also just found out where my coaster club is having their yearly convention next year. This is in an area of the country where there might be some interesting bridges to check out. Of course, there is nothing inherently dark and sinister about such structures. But this only applies if one avoids the entire aspect of the subject. This would be like having a keen interest in large predators like lions, tigers and other big cats, but refusing to acknowledge that they are known to kill and eat people from time to time. It doesn’t mean that unsettling aspect should be the entire focus, but it is still something that is hard to ignore. The bridge I will soon be visiting in Maine is not only a passageway across a river, but is a tourist attraction in its own right. Its tower observatory gives visitors an elevated view of the surrounding area, including an historic Civil War fort that is adjacent to it. But this unassuming bridge has also claimed several victims during its existence. And apparently the old bridge that it replaced also had a body count.

The new bridge is in the process of being chained, or will have already been chained, by the time I see it. I don’t know how I will feel about that. Most visitors will likely be oblivious, but not me. I will have knowledge that this bridge has facilitated many deaths and has therefore been caged to stop the bloodshed. I knew that when I visited the New River Gorge Bridge last summer. But it has yet to be caged, and it probably never will be. This is because it is one of the main tourist attractions in West Virginia, and every October scores of people show up to watch BASE jumpers leap from it. The Maine bridge, on the other hand, has its observation tower as the focus of tourism (along with the nearby fort). In addition, there is no pedestrian walkway nor any sort of festival where the bridge is shut down to traffic. Therefore, binding that monster does not affect its function as either a road bridge or a tourist attraction. But I don’t know…I wish I could have seen it before it was bound. Then I wouldn’t have a visible reminder of its dark history. I knew of the West Virginia’s monster’s sinister reputation as a permanent solution to a temporary problem before I saw it. But there was nothing literal right there in my face, as it were, to force me to think about that sort of thing.

I am reminded of something that I witnessed when I was a child, when I injured my hand (which I had broken a few months before). My mom took me to the ER at the county hospital to be X-rayed. While I was in the waiting area for that, I noticed a man sitting almost directly across from me. He was bound in handcuffs and had on either side a state trooper guarding him, and he was dressed in prison garb. While this wasn’t too unusual, what freaked me out was the way this man stared at me. It was like looking into the eyes of some dangerous animal that might kill you if it got the chance… I could not help but wonder what this man was accused of (or had been convicted of) doing. Everything about him screamed danger – the way he sat, the way he stared, and of course the very visible reminders of the handcuffs and the two police officers.

To make a long story short, I got my X-ray, and luckily my hand was not broken. Thankfully I never saw that man again in person, but I did see his mugshot in the paper and on the news only a day or so later. This was because he escaped from his guards after they removed the cuffs so he could be X-rayed. He got away from the hospital and ended up traveling right to my town, where he stabbed three people. We were warned to not go outside and keep our doors locked until they were able to capture him again. He had originally been arrested for some other sort of violent attack, which was why he was heavily guarded that day at the hospital.

So, in less than two weeks I will behold the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in person, and if it is fully chained, I will know exactly why. The chain link fencing erected at its railings will be a dead (no pun intended) give away as to its association with violent, brutal deaths and injuries. I won’t have to wonder what it has been “accused or convicted of”. Other visitors might be like me as a child, naively questioning the high fencing as they look down upon the deck of the monster from the tower’s windows.

The only difference is that once I return home, I’ll likely never see that bridge again in person. It will always remain there, spanning that river in Maine, awaiting its next victim but being mostly barred from claiming any more lives. However, in a few years a truly gargantuan 600ft tall monster will rise up out of the Patapsco River, almost in my own neighborhood. Might its owner recognize its potential lethal allure and chain it from the start? I suppose that remains to be seen…